Yesterday at our competition, I was talking with my team about which teams to choose. I told him that we should choose a certain team as the 2nd pick. He responded, “Oh, you mean the 3rd pick.”
I don’t understand why some people call the 2nd round pick “the 3rd pick.” Does anyone else have this problem?
“second” is ambiguous whereas “third” is unambiguous, even when it’s not technically correct. It’s as simple as that. So you will hear some people say “first pick” and “third pick” or “first pick” and just “third”. It just makes conversations less prone to misunderstandings - it sounds like you still understood what was meant even though it didn’t really make sense.
Along with what Oliver said (which is usually the reason I say “first pick” and “third pick”) when you think of people talking about “pick as third” or “pick for third” it is pretty reasonable that the term was adopted to be “third pick”.